{"id":229198,"date":"2026-01-12T03:39:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T03:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/229198\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T03:39:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T03:39:05","slug":"farewell-spit-stranding-11-euthanised-42-returned-to-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/229198\/","title":{"rendered":"Farewell Spit stranding: 11 euthanised, 42 returned to sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Whales<\/p>\n

\nMore than 50 whales became stranded on Thursday at Farewell Spit.
\nPhoto: Supplied \/ Project Jonah New Zealand\n<\/p>\n

Eleven whales have been euthanised five days on from a mass stranding in Golden Bay.<\/p>\n

More than 50 whales became stranded<\/a> on Thursday at Farewell Spit, and over the weekend hundreds of volunteers worked to refloat them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Project Jonah said 42 were successfully returned to the sea.<\/p>\n

The remaining whales were found re-stranded on Monday morning, showing signs of acute stress. Two others had died overnight.<\/p>\n

The Department of Conservation (DOC) said there were poor conditions for refloating on Monday, and the final group were not expected to survive another refloating attempt.<\/p>\n

“A condition assessment was carried out this morning by DOC staff and Project Jonah, with support from Massey University experts via video link,” the department said.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, the whales are not in good condition after five days of strandings, and it was determined euthanasia is the most humane option<\/p>\n

“This is not the outcome we had hoped for, but the decision has been made with the welfare of the whales in mind.”<\/p>\n

Project Jonah volunteer coordinator Louisa Hawkes said the community response to the stranding had been amazing.<\/p>\n

“We couldn’t have done it without everybody who has come down to help, whether that was just for a morning, an afternoon, a day or turning up day after day.<\/p>\n

“Every whale had its welfare monitored throughout the event, and those that were in a good condition were given the best possible chance of a refloat.”<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 50 whales became stranded on Thursday at Farewell Spit. Photo: Supplied \/ Project Jonah New Zealand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-229198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}